SEATTLE — When the student body at the University of Washington returns from summer vacation next week, what it will find is an athletic juggernaut.
Or three.
While the UW football team struggles to find the powerful consistency that has eluded the program for the good part of two decades, Husky Nation can take pride in the multitude of fall sports that are thriving. And it doesn’t take much to figure out the common trait.
UW has nationally ranked teams in women’s volleyball (fifth), women’s soccer (23rd) and women’s cross country (first). The Huskies’ three programs — the only women’s sports offered in the fall — have a combined record of 17-1-1, and that doesn’t include the first-place finish by the cross-country team in the Sundodger Invitational over the weekend.
“We’re always pushing for each other,” women’s soccer coach Lesle Gallimore said. “You want to enjoy each other’s successes, but you want to make sure your brothers and sisters aren’t having more success. You don’t want to be the weak link in the family.”
With three ranked teams, UW has proven once again that its women’s sports are on par with just about any athletic department in the country.
The key, said athletic director Scott Woodward, has been elite leaders at the top. While crediting predecessor Barbara Hedges for making the hires, Woodward said volleyball coach Jim McLaughlin, soccer coach Gallimore and cross country coach Greg Metcalf have few peers.
“It’s just the overall genetics in this place,” Woodward said. “We’re going to try to be the best in everything we do. I can’t give you a specific, this-is-the-magic-bullet. In each right, coach Metcalf, coach Gallimore and coach McLaughlin have done just great jobs.”
Since 2005, UW women’s teams have won national team titles in volleyball (2005), cross country (2008) and softball (2009).
On paper, the cross country team looks like it has a great shot to add to that list. The top-ranked Huskies haven’t been tested yet — UW rested most of its top runners for the season-opening Sundodger Invitational over the weekend, yet still won handily — but return six of their top seven runners from last year’s NCAA runner-up. Led by former national prep champions Katie Flood and Megan Goethals, both juniors, the Huskies look like they have a chance to repeat 2008’s success at the NCAA championships in November.
Volleyball didn’t have quite the expectations but shot out to a 9-0 record in non-conference play before improving to 10-0 with Tuesday’s win over Washington State in the Pac-12 opener. The Huskies jumped from 14th to fifth in the national poll and look like they might have enough talent to challenge Pac-12 heavyweights UCLA, USC and Oregon on the way to a probable 10th consecutive NCAA tournament appearance.
“We try not to look at the rankings,” said Kylin Munoz, a senior from Monroe. “That’s just a number. What really matters is what number you are at the end of the season.”
Like volleyball, the women’s soccer team exploded out of the gates this season, winning its first seven matches. Two years removed from an improbable Elite Eight appearance, the Huskies beat their first seven opponents — among them, 2010 national champion Notre Dame — by an aggregate score of 16-2 before a tie at Utah State and a loss to 17th-ranked BYU over the weekend.
“It’s been incredible,” said Hillary Zevenvergen, a junior from Woodway who played at King’s High School. “After two wins, we were like: ‘Let’s keep the streak alive.’ And then we kept winning. It was awesome, a huge confidence-builder. We were like: ‘Winning’s so much fun, let’s not let the freshmen know what it’s like to lose.’”
Gallimore, who has taken UW women’s soccer to 11 NCAA tournaments since arriving at the school in 1994, sums up the Huskies’ success in women’s sports in two words.
“Equal opportunity,” she said. “We’re treated very well. The coaching hires have been outstanding — some of the best in the business, and I’m proud to call them colleagues. And it goes back to the early ’90s, and even the late ’80s, and the people who made a push to make Washington sports what they are.”
One thing that has made the sustained success of all three sports rather remarkable is the improbability of bringing solid athletes in three outdoor sports usually played in sunshine to a city like Seattle. Woodward said recruiting to UW is easier than one might think.
“It’s something that we ask ourselves all the time,” the Huskies’ AD said, “and it comes down to three things: how great this university is academically, it’s a perfect mama-bear city — it’s just right: not too big, not too small — and then, finally, our athletic department is going to compete at the highest level at everything we do. And that’s a potent three-legged stool.”
Woodward likes to say, only half-jokingly, that the best way to support sports like cross country, soccer and volleyball is to buy season tickets to UW football, a sport that brings in 85 percent of the athletic department’s budget. But he also said that winning, in any sport, is good for morale for Huskies both past and present.
“It’s a testament to what we do and how we do it here,” he said, “and that’s something I’m very proud of.”
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